Chapter 34: A Nightmare
The night fell, and Klaus returned to his house.
Without a word, he threw his clothes onto the ground and jumped into his bed to rest a little.
The day wasn’t that exhausting, but it was surely the fiercest one he had lived in some time.
"Sweet dreams to me," he whispered as he scratched his abdomen and shut his eyes to drift into the calm sleep.
At least that’s what he had planned to do, but as he dived deeper into his sleep, he slipped in a dream, if one could call it that.
The sounds of sirens, screams for help, and curses of despair forced his eyes open.
He sat up, his body sweating profusely.
He rubbed his face and mumbled in distress, "What was that?"
He looked down; his t-shirt was wet and sticking to his average figure.
"Did I leave the computer on?" He massaged his temples and slowly descended the bed, his joints aching from sitting for days in his office chair.
He walked to his computer table and frowned.
The computer wasn’t on.
"Where did those sounds come from—"
Before he could finish, his gaze fell on the civil defense signal receiver mounted on the wall.
Faint, static sounds were coming out of it.
He walked over to it with wide eyes and muttered, "What the fuck? How the hell did this break?! I paid 500$ for this shit."
He clicked the red off and on switch, and the sounds became slightly clearer.
Klaus’s expression turned deeply confused, and he mumbled, "What bullshit is this? Isn’t it illegal to play pranks on distress signals?"
He turned to his bed; he was too tired to give a fuck about these stupid pranks.
However, just as he took a step, the ground beneath shook hard and he stumbled sideways before slamming into the wall.
"Ugh?!" Pain coursed through his spine, and he mumbled with a terrified face, "What was that...?"
The ground shook once again.
"An earthquake?"
Distant noises and the sound of collapse reached his ears, and he forced himself to stand up.
He placed a hand on the wall and the other on his back as he scurried out of his house.
The instant he stepped out of his house, his face turned extremely grim.
"What is going on...?"
Multiple of the skyscrapers had crumbled down, the ground was on fire, and citizens were crying for help.
"What kind of earthquake is this?" He whispered, his voice heavy with disbelief.
He pulled out his phone from his pocket to check the news, but to his disappointment, there was no signal.
"Shit."
He looked around in panic, and his gaze fell on two police officers shouting for the citizens to calm down.
’I should ask them,’ he decided and stepped toward them.
A warm feeling appeared in his body.
"W-What?!" He stumbled back in shock, and a few of the citizens around him showed the same confusion.
The warmth spread from the center of his abdomen to his whole body, and the pain from before vanished.
"What was that?" He mumbled and clenched his fist a few times.
Huh? I feel stronger and fresher all of a sudden.
"What’s happening?"
"Do you know anything about this office?"
The citizens questioned, panic and confusion clear on their faces.
Klaus raised his foot off the ground to move toward them, but his ears rang, a shiver ran down his spine, and he turned his head to the back.
What was that?
His hands trembled a little.
A deafening crack resounded from inside his house, and the distress signal from before replayed in his head.
It’s the end... the end of the world...
The entrance door of his house exploded into pieces as two thick arms covered in solid chitin armor tore through it, and a hideous monster with two large antennae, mandibles, four legs, and a gaster leapt at him with ravenous eyes.
Klaus’s eyes shot open as he broke out of his sleep and breathed erratically. The images of what he had just experienced engraved themselves into his mind.
"W-What was that?" He mumbled darkly, his trembling body covered in sweat.
[It was the first day of the apocalypse.]
He stared at the screen with a horrified expression and asked after taking a deep breath.
"Why did I dream that day?"
[As Host has now stepped into the mental layer, your mind is searching for knowledge and information. When you are awake, I can restrict it, but when a person is asleep, their unconscious mind overtakes their conscious mind, and I cannot affect the former.]
"So my mind forcefully extracted the knowledge of the first day of the apocalypse from you?" Klaus concluded.
[That is correct.]
He clenched his fist and asked in a shaky voice, "Can... Can I stop that from happening?"
[The only way to stop that is to deactivate myself.]
"Deactivate as in you will vanish?"
[Yes.]
He rubbed his face. "Leave it then. I can just not sleep."
[Can you? Host did not need to sleep since the day I awakened, yet you did because you are addicted to it.]
"Why the hell are you making sleep sound like a drug?" He asked with a bitter tone and stepped down from his bed.
[It is a drug.]
Shut up, I need water.
Seeing the sunlight streaming through the curtains, he mumbled, "It’s already day."
"That dream really ruined my night."
[Nights.]
He tilted his head. "What?"
[Host has been sleeping for three nights.]
"Eh... WHAT?!" He shouted and quickly checked his phone.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" He bit his fingernails, and his eyes widened.
"Seventy missed calls..." he whispered. "And ten of them are from the police station. I am fucked; they probably think I ran away or something."
[None of this would have happened if you had listened to my suggestion.]
"Ugh." He drove his fist into the system screen and hissed, "Shut up."
"What should I do?" He racked his brain.
A doorbell echoed throughout the house.